Addis Ababa, June 23, 2023 (FBC) – On June 20, the International Multimedia Press Center of the Rossiya Segodnya Media Group hosted an online roundtable discussion, Media Development Strategies in the 21st Century: Challenges and Prospects.
Yulia Golubeva, Deputy Director General of Gazprom-Media Holding, and Viktoria Budanova, Head of the Directorate for African Affairs at the Rossiya Segodnya International Media Group, joined the video conference from Moscow.
Participants from African countries included Admasu Damtew from Ethiopia, CEO of FANA Broadcasting Corporate; Jata Kazondu, Manager at the Namibia Press Agency (NAMPA); Paul Ilado from Kenya, Head of Content at the Radio Africa Group; Lovemore Mataire from Zimbabwe, a representative of Zimpapers; and El Sayed Hany from Egypt, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Al Gomhuria.
El Sayed Hany, opened the discussion by noting that in the modern world, the media have a double responsibility, because now their role is not only to cover the news; it is their responsibility to refute false information and disseminate facts that defend the interests of their country. He also mentioned that the public is paying a high price for lies spread by the media.
He said that the problem with the African media is related to “having many Western news agencies as the basic source of news. Thus, it participated, without intention, in the spread of lies and misleading information that comes out from decision – making circles in the United States of America. We are still sharing the American newspapers and media in misleading our peoples and the absence of their awareness. Therefore, the challenge in front of us now is to rely on our Journalists in reporting events from the place where it happened. We must send our journalists everywhere in the world,” he concluded.
According FANA Broadcasting Corporate CEO Admasu Damtew, spreading fake news and patently false stories causes a huge problem with trust in the media and sources of information in Ethiopia and other African countries.
The digital media industry in Ethiopia is facing the challenge of limited infrastructure and a limited access to funding, which makes it difficult for start-ups to grow and scale, the CEO said.
He added that many people in Ethiopia have limited digital literacy, which is a challenge for the digital media industry, as it limits the potential audience and makes it difficult to create and distribute content.
Admasu also noted rapid technological change as a challenge for the modern media industry: the leading digital media in Ethiopia are not using new technologies such as artificial intelligence or others as much as they should.
Yulia Golubeva, Deputy Director General of Gazprom Media Holding, spoke about the prospects for cooperation between Russia and Africain television, radio and film production.
“There are several potential directions possible for cooperation with African countries. First of all, it is the exchange of content. We can also consider co-production of programs. By the way, our current TV show “Stars in Africa” is being produced in South Africa,” she said. Yulia also highlighted Gazprom Media Holding’s extensive experience in radio broadcasting, which they are ready to share with their African colleagues.
Jata Kazondu, who represents NAMPA, also spoke about the need to provide truthful and accurate information to the public.
“Our media should offer the target audience a more balanced angle. The public should be able to choose between different points of view. Also, we need to use news sources aside from conventional agencies such as AFP, the Associated Press or Reuters, because getting information from them costs a lot of money. The high cost of information is one of the problems we face,” the Namibian representative said. In addition, he touched upon the “long-standing” problem of fake news.
“There is a need to increase media literacy, which means training not only journalists, but also the audience. New technologies need to be widely applied and developed to improve the efficiency of the media,” he added.
Paul Ilado from Kenya agreed with his colleague. “There is a challenge for legacy media: to remain accessible, relevant and conventional media partition, as in Africa, adapting to a new world, that is time-sensitive, more interactive, etc.,” he said, adding that the media in African countries contribute to the “deepening and institutionalizing democracy.”
According to Paul Ilado, the media should become “an instrument for ensuring and improving the quality of life in our society.” However, for African citizens to be able to fully benefit from media content, the information needs to be adapted to local languages.
Viktoria Budanova, Head of Sputnik Africa, also emphasized the importance of countering fake news and developing exchange mechanisms.
“At Sputnik we keep our journalistic standards high, and we would like to continue doing it in a digitised world, where information spreads quickly and very often without fact-checking. And that is why the most important challenge both Russian and African media face is the fight against fake news,” Viktoria said.
Lovemore Mataire, a representative of Zimpapers, also supported the idea that the digital world has created its own problems for the media. In his opinion, “digital revenues are not growing at the same magnitude as the digital audiences. Moreover, journalists should be able to create credible and reliable content which anyone can resort to as a source of credible news.”
Like other participants in the conference, Lovemore Mataire noted the economic challenges such as too much reliance on digital ad revenues compared and lack of digital content monetization strategies.
The video conference, which brought together the heads of several media outlets from African countries, took place ahead of the Russia-Africa summit, which will be held on July 27-28 in St. Petersburg.